Anti-Fracking Activist Leases Farm for Drilling

Two years ago, Denise Dennis delivered a dramatic denunciation of Marcellus Shale natural gas development at a Philadelphia City Council hearing. She equated drilling to the tobacco industry, and said that “Pennsylvanians are the lab rats” for a massive shale gas experiment.

The Philadelphia resident had a powerful story: Her family owned a historic 153-acre farm in Susquehanna County, where her ancestors were among the first freed African Americans to settle in Pennsylvania just after the Revolutionary War. She became a potent symbol in the shale gas wars.

“The process for extracting natural gas from shale is as dirty as coal mining,” she testified to thunderous applause at the 2010 council meeting.

“Wow,” said Councilman Curtis Jones Jr., who sponsored the hearing.

But Dennis’ fervor has subsided in the last two years, undone by the financial need of preserving her family’s deteriorating historic farm, and by the salesmanship of the Cabot Oil & Gas Corp.

Last week Dennis signed a lease allowing the Houston company to extract the shale gas beneath her family’s farm, which the National Trust for Historic Preservation has called a “rare and highly significant African American cultural landscape.”

“I decided to stop demonizing the industry and to start negotiating with individuals,” said Dennis. “I had to be realistic.”

The reality was that most of the surrounding landowners had leased their mineral rights, and gas drilling was going to proceed with or without the Dennis farm.

“We were an island in a sea of leased land,” she said. “As I saw it, the drilling companies were now my neighbors, and it was better to get along with them than to be antagonistic.”

Recanting or just selling out? Who knows. Where is this character in the new Matt Damon anti-fracking agitprop movie?

Fracking is moving us toward energy independence in spite of the President and his administrations efforts to thwart oil production and redistribution, I mean… investment in wind and solar. The President’s crony energy portfolio is a dismal failure. Once again the market proves its superiority to central planning.

Harold

Climate change, fracking, drilling are all bad according to the environmentalists. But when money is involved and those same environmentalists have a dog in the hunt then hypocrisy raises its ugly head.

Clarence A. Herz

Pennsyvania unlike North Dakota has the “rule of capture” which means if she hadn’t signed they would have just taken her gas from her neighbors side.

cylde

Hey, we are all in this together and sharing is good unless she does not get a royalty check.

WOOF

Property rights of the powerful.

ObservingTheProcess

REALLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The anti’s are coming to grips with reality. There bubble of lies has been burst. It reminds me of the “Animal Farm Antic of “4 legs good 2 legs bad.” In this case fracking is bad only until I can pocket the money.

borborygmi

money talks bullshit walks

VanessaElizebeth

Commissioners said they are creating a security plan for future hearings to ensure that everyone is made to feel welcome and everyone is heard.